She Died Once: Now The Mafia Kneels
I was the Mafia Princess of the Wolfe family, engaged to Daniel Marino to unite our powerful syndicates.
But during a hit at a speakeasy, we were both gunned down.
As my chest was torn apart by a Tommy gun, I looked at my fiancé, expecting him to reach for me.
Instead, there was no despair in his eyes, only a twisted, selfish terror.
We both died on that floor, but the devil sent us back to the day of my hospital discharge.
Instead of finalizing our wedding, Daniel stormed into my father’s study.
"I won't marry Isabella. I want Celine."
He demanded to break our engagement, claiming he wouldn't be collateral damage in a Wolfe family war, and declared his true love for my sweet, orphaned adopted sister.
He thought shedding me would save his life, completely unaware that the assassination was orchestrated by his precious Celine.
In my past life, I didn't know she was a rat who sold our patrol routes to rivals and plotted my murder just to take my place.
If I hadn't died once, I would have believed her manufactured tears and comforted her.
But this time, I remembered everything.
I buried the vengeful woman I had become and let my face pale as I pushed open the heavy oak doors.
"Daniel? You... you want Celine?" I whispered, forcing a heartbroken tear to fall.
This time, I would play the fragile victim, just so I could orchestrate their absolute ruin.
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Chapter 1
Isabella POV
The memory of my death tasted like copper and expensive champagne.
Even now, I could feel the phantom chill of the stiletto blade sliding smoothly between my ribs, piercing my heart. But more vividly, I remembered the look in Dante Falcone's eyes—a sickening blend of shock and agony—as I drove my mother-of-pearl hairpin deep into his throat. We had bled out together on the Persian rug of that Art Deco suite at The Drake Hotel, two reigning monarchs of Chicago's underworld choking on our own ruined ambitions.
I blinked, and the scent of blood vanished, replaced by the heavy aroma of Cuban cigars and aged whiskey.
I wasn't dead. I was seventeen again, standing in the dimly lit hallway of the Moretti Estate. My hand hovered inches from the heavy mahogany door of my father's study. It was slightly ajar, and the voices bleeding through the crack froze the blood in my veins.
"I won't marry Isabella."
It was Dante. His voice was firm, laced with an arrogant certainty that hadn't been there yesterday.
"I am breaking the betrothal, Don Marco. I want Eva. I will only marry Eva."
The words hit me like a physical blow, but not out of heartbreak. Clarity. Dante Falcone had remembered. He had brought his memories of our bloody future back with him, and he thought he could simply rewrite the script by discarding me for my adoptive sister, the treacherous snake who had helped orchestrate my family's downfall.
He thought he was the only one who knew the future.
A cold, calculating calm washed over me. I am a Moretti. We don't cry over traitors; we bury them. If Dante wanted to play the visionary, I would let him. I would be the perfect, oblivious victim.
I pushed the door open, letting my face drain of color. I widened my eyes, summoning a look of pure, unadulterated devastation. "Dante?" I whispered, my voice trembling flawlessly.
The room fell into a deathly silence. Dante turned to me, his handsome face tightening. He looked at me not with the hatred of our final moments, but with a condescending pity. He really thought I was still the naive girl desperately in love with him.
"Izzy..." he started, taking a step forward.
"Do not speak her name!"
The roar shook the very foundations of the room. My father, Don Marco 'The Butcher' Moretti, surged to his feet. His broad chest heaved, his eyes blazing with a lethal, predatory fury. In one violent motion, he grabbed the heavy crystal whiskey decanter from his desk and hurled it at the stone fireplace.
Crash.
Amber liquid and jagged shards of glass exploded across the hearth. The air instantly turned volatile, thick with the promise of a Vendetta.
"You dare come into my home and insult the Moretti blood?" my father snarled, his voice dropping to a dangerous, gravelly register. "Your father, Don Vincent, begged for this alliance on his knees to stop a war. And you, a boy playing at being a man, think you can tear up a blood oath?"
Dante lifted his chin, his jaw set. "I respect you, Don Marco. But there is no love between Isabella and me. We would only destroy each other. Eva is the one I—"
"Enough!"
My mother, Sofia, moved faster than I could track. She crossed the room and pulled me fiercely into her arms, pressing my face against her silk blouse to shield me from the humiliation. I let my shoulders shake, playing the part of the broken princess to perfection.
"Does your father know of this disrespect, Dante?" my mother demanded, her voice a whip cracking in the tense air. She glared at him with absolute disgust. "You break a sacred vow, and for what? You think our daughter is trash you can just discard? And you dare to drag Eva—a sweet, innocent girl who loves Isabella like a sister—into your dishonorable mess?"
Over my mother's shoulder, I peeked at Dante. He stood tall, absorbing the wrath of the Mafia Queen, looking entirely too pleased with himself for surviving the initial blast. He thought the worst was over. He thought he had won.
I buried my face deeper into my mother's embrace, hiding the dark, venomous smile that curved my lips.
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8.4
I had been locked in a freezing cellar for three days, starving and waiting for my husband, Marco, to save me.
Instead, the iron door opened to reveal his mistress holding a toddler with Marco's exact face.
Marco wasn't sterile like he had claimed for years. He just wanted my De Luca family trust funds.
With my husband watching coldly, his mistress and a corrupt doctor pinned me to the concrete floor.
"We're going to carve you up until you're unrecognizable, then throw you in the lake," she laughed.
The most chilling part wasn't the affair. It was the realization that my mother-in-law, the mafia matriarch I had served faithfully for three years, had personally signed my death warrant to save their crumbling empire.
The scalpel sliced deep into my cheek, permanently destroying my face as warm blood poured down my neck.
I had given them everything. I used my family's money to pay off his secret gambling debts and endured endless insults about being a barren wife, only to realize the entire family viewed me as nothing but a pig to be slaughtered for cash.
In the suffocating darkness, I didn't pray for mercy. I swore a blood oath.
I didn't die in that cellar. Saved by a legendary rival boss, I stood outside the Falcone estate three weeks later.
I pushed open the heavy oak doors to my own memorial service, the jagged red scar on my face silencing the hall.
"I'm afraid your plans to inherit my estate will have to be postponed," I smiled at my terrified husband.
7.1
For ten years, I disguised myself as my dead twin brother, fighting bloody mob wars to build the Falcone family's bootlegging empire.
When the war ended, I thought I could finally take off the men's suits and be Anya again.
Instead, my parents stole my victories to secure my father's power, demanding I disappear forever.
When I tried to expose the truth, my family dragged me into a soundproof basement.
My younger brother forced a metal funnel past my teeth and poured corrosive chemicals down my throat, dissolving my vocal cords into a blistered ruin.
They chained me to a freezing pier, whipped me bloody, and let the men I used to lead spit on me as a jealous traitor.
Then, under the guise of a family reconciliation dinner, my mother drugged my wine.
While I lay paralyzed but fully conscious on my bed, my brother took heavy iron pliers and crushed all ten of my fingers, bone by bone.
They wanted to ensure I could never hold a gun or write the truth again.
I had slaughtered for them, bled for them, and craved only their love.
In return, they pulverized my body and painted me as a hysterical madwoman just to keep the crown I had won for them.
The foolish girl who wanted a family died in that agonizing pain, leaving behind only a ghost.
Dragging my mangled, bandaged body into the rival Romano family's charity gala, I collapsed at the feet of their ruthless matriarch.
"I invoke the sacred code," I rasped through my chemically burned throat. "I demand a Vendetta."
8.2
I spent a year in a Swiss asylum, swallowing pills to cure a madness that didn’t exist.
It turned out the medication was just sugar.
My insanity was a script written by Jaxon Francis, the Don of New York, just so he could marry a Cartel princess without his ward getting in the way.
When I finally escaped and tried to leave him, his new wife staged her own kidnapping and framed me.
Jaxon didn’t ask for proof. He didn’t look at the evidence.
Instead, he tied a rope around my ankles and dragged me behind a helicopter across the jagged rocks of the Wastelands.
He held his wife close and watched as my skin was flayed and my bones shattered, believing he was executing a traitor.
He left me for dead in the dirt, convinced he had cleansed his empire.
I took the hush money his mother threw at me and vanished, letting Alina Phillips die in that field.
Three years later, I returned to New York as "Echo," the elusive artist the world was obsessing over.
At a charity auction, Jaxon bid one hundred million dollars for a painting of a woman’s scarred back, desperate to buy redemption for the ghost he thought he killed.
He chased me into the rain, begging for a second chance, swearing he had destroyed his wife for me.
I looked at the man who once held my heart and simply smiled.
Then I turned to the man standing beside me.
"Jaxon, meet Darwin," I said, linking my arm through his.
"My husband."
7.4
In a world ruled by guns, secrets, and blood-soaked loyalties, love is the most dangerous currency of all.
Alessandro De Luca is the unseen king of a global cartel-ruthless, brilliant, and feared across continents. His word is law, his mercy nonexistent. Until one night, one woman, and one mistake unravel everything he has built.
Elena Hart is innocent but unbreakable, drawn into the underworld through a debt she never created. She should have been collateral-nothing more. Instead, she becomes his weakness.
As enemies close in and betrayal festers within the cartel, Alessandro must choose between the empire crowned in blood... or the woman who threatens to destroy it.
Love was never part of the plan.
Survival was.
And in this world, both demand a price.
9.6
When the boy I had loved in silence for five years dropped to one knee and proposed to the very girl who had bullied me, the entire room burst into laughter at my expense.
"That fat, ugly Lydia Prescott actually thinks she has a shot with a mafia boss?"
In a single night, I became the city's favorite punchline. I fled in humiliation.
The next time I appeared, I had transformed. The weight was gone, and so was the ridicule. I stunned everyone into silence.
Miles Calloway begged through tears for another chance, but I simply slipped my arm through the arm of the mafia godfather beside me and smiled.
"Sorry. I'm married."
The man rumored to be cold-blooded and untouchable pulled me closer and declared with chilling certainty, "Lydia is my wife."
The room erupted.
Only my best friend, Annie Sinclair, gasped, "Lydia, you seriously locked down my dad?"
7.8
The fire that melted my skin should have been the end of my story.
I had been the perfect mafia wife. I obeyed my father, I married Dante Genovese, and I even birthed his daughter.
But in return, he locked us in a safehouse and lit a match.
He watched from behind a steel door as I burned to ash, all because his mistress, Sofia, was jealous and wanted me out of the picture.
My own brother had spiked my champagne to ensure I was too weak to fight back.
I died screaming, my lungs filling with smoke and the scent of my husband's betrayal.
But when I gasped awake, I wasn't in hell.
I was in the bridal suite at the Ritz-Carlton.
My hands were smooth. My skin was unblemished. The date on the digital clock burned red in the darkness.
It was three years ago.
It was the night of our engagement. The night it all began.
Dante was in the bathroom right now, humming contentedly as he washed off the scent of his mistress before coming to claim his "lawful prize."
In my past life, I waited for him. I let him take me, thinking my submission would earn his love.
Not this time.
I didn't run to the lobby for help. My family had sold me out.
Instead, I took the elevator to the Penthouse floor.
To the territory of the Outfit.
To the door of Matteo Moretti—The Butcher. The only man ruthless enough to make Dante tremble.
When the door opened, revealing a man with eyes like ice and a gun in his hand, I didn't flinch.
I fell to my knees and looked up at the monster who could save me.
"I am Elena Vitiello," I whispered, the drug in my veins setting my blood on fire.
"And I have a proposition."